


Finders Ain't Keepers, Mate

by ozhawk



Series: Shadows and Light [3]
Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Darcy Feels, F/M, Variations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:59:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2606021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozhawk/pseuds/ozhawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So here’s what Jacques was up to during the events of Thor 2 – for those of you who may have forgotten, I cast James Franco as Jacques Svendson. He’s the older brother of Jen who married Clint in my major story Through A Glass Darkly. He’s a former Australian SAS soldier who was transferred to the Avengers Initiative because they needed someone anonymous to help with their dirty work. He’s also an excellent scientist babysitter :)</p><p>He transferred to London with Jane and Darcy for two reasons: first because Thor asked him to look after Jane, so he’s officially her bodyguard, and secondly because he’s sleeping with Darcy. This story begins in the scene early in Thor 2 where Darcy, Ian and Jane are checking out the gravitational anomalies in the abandoned warehouse with the street kids and dropping things down the stairwell. In my version, Jacques is with them.</p><p>Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel except Jacques and his sister Jen, and their family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finders Ain't Keepers, Mate

Jacques was so fascinated, it took him a few minutes to realise that Dr. Foster had disappeared.

“Darcy, stay here,” he ordered, and she glanced up at him and nodded just as Intern Ian (henceforth to be known as Idiot Intern Ian) dropped the car keys into the void. And they didn’t come back.

Shaking his head, Jacques jogged on up the stairs. Footprints and scuff marks in the dust and trash littering the abandoned building told him which way Jane had gone.

“Jane,” he called, jogging along a darkened corridor, trained eyes scanning the ground. Suddenly he stopped. Those were – drag marks? _Fuck!_ “JANE!” he bellowed it this time, and started running fast. All of a sudden he bounced off – nothing?  and hit the ground hard. He scrambled up and put his hands out in front of him cautiously.

There was nothing there, but it was rock solid. And the drag marks on the floor stopped right at the boundary of the – nothing. _Oh my God. Thor is going to kill me. I’ve lost Jane._

“Jacques, what is it?” Darcy came running up behind him, out of breath, and he held out a hand to stop her from running into the wall of nothing too.

“There’s something here.” He put his hand out, feeling along the invisible boundary, checking if it went all the way across the corridor, thinking inconsequentially that he must look like one of those mimes pretending they’re in a glass box.

Darcy stared, wide-eyed. And then – the wall of nothing seemed to soften, and his hand went through. And disappeared. He could still feel it, but not see it.

“Okay, fuck, that’s creepy,” Darcy said, distressed, grabbing at his other arm. “Jacques, don’t!”

“Jane went through here,” he looked at her, at her huge blue eyes, her dark hair tumbling from beneath her knit cap. “I have to follow. Stay here, Darcy. I’ll get Jane and be back as soon as I can.” _If I can_. And with a quick twist of his wrist, he disengaged her hand on his arm and stepped through the invisible barrier.

“ _Jacques!_ ” Darcy let out a scream of pure fright. And, distantly, behind her, heard an answering yell. “Jacques?” she spun around and ran back the way she’d come.

She found him at the bottom of a stairwell, one leg horribly, unnaturally crumpled beneath him, blood seeping slowly onto the filthy concrete. He was barely conscious. There was no sign of Jane.

“Jacques, oh my God,” Darcy went to her knees beside him, frightened to touch him in case he’d broken his back or his neck. “Call for an ambulance!” she screamed at Ian, who was following her and now stood, hovering stupidly.

“No signal – right,” Ian bolted at Darcy’s glare.

“Darce,” Jacques gasped out, managing to lift his hand to touch her cheek as she crouched over him. “The portal – just dropped me here. Don’t know where Jane went. Find her – be careful – don’t go through portals…” and with the last of his strength, he whispered; “Love you, Darce…”

She stayed with him, sobbing, until the ambulance arrived and the paramedics very slowly, very carefully loaded him onto a body board and carried him away. She thought to ask what hospital they would take him to, because, no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t go with him. She had to find Jane.

 

Hours and hours later, after she’d convinced the police to look for Jane _before_ they arrested her for trespassing, after Jane had come out of the building and there was some weird-ass explosion and rain and Thor disappearing in a burst of light _with_ Jane and too many things for Darcy to cope with, she found herself in a police lock-up, staring up at a burly, irritated desk sergeant.

“One phone call. I need my one phone call.”

“All right, all right,” he snapped, and let her out. With shaking fingers, Darcy tapped in the number Jacques had made her memorise, and after a single ring, a smooth British voice answered.

“Avengers Tower. How may I direct your call?”

“Oh, JARVIS, thank God,” Darcy whimpered.

 

An hour later, a very smooth lawyer bailed both her and Ian out and drove them to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where Darcy found that Jacques was in surgery to pin and repair his leg. Much screaming and hysterical invocation of Tony Stark’s name later (because money really does talk loudest) the orthopaedic surgeon joined them and explained to Darcy very nicely that Jacques was going to be absolutely fine, and yes, he would be put in the hospital’s finest private suite as soon as he was out of recovery, and yes, she could be with him when he started coming out from under the anaesthetic.

And so, when Jacques’ eyelids began to flutter groggily open, he saw the face of an angel at his bedside. Tear-stained, hair wild, her lips swollen from biting at them fearfully, Darcy still looked utterly beautiful to him.

“Darce,” he groaned. “Where’s Jane?” Even barely conscious, his duty had to come first.

“Thor has her.”

“’Kay.” He fumbled one hand free of the heavy blanket weighing him down and reached for her. “ _You_ okay?”

“I’m fine.” Her mouth twitched into a wobbly smile as she clutched at his hand like a lifeline. “Don’t worry, Jacques. Everyone’s fine but you.”

“Be right in no time,” he sighed, feeling his eyelids starting to drift again. He smiled when he heard her voice, even though it seemed to be coming from very far away.

“You better had be, Jacques Svendson, ‘cause weird shit is goin’ down again and I don’t think I can cope without you!”

“Find Selvig,” he sighed out before consciousness escaped him again.

 

Jacques came round a few hours later to find Pepper sitting by his bed, reading something on a StarkSlate. “Ms. Potts?” he said weakly.

“Jacques! Oh I’m so glad you’re awake,” Pepper immediately put the slate down and leant over him.

“Where’s Darcy?”

“She and Ian are off breaking Doctor Selvig out of a lunatic asylum. Um – apparently there was an incident at Stonehenge.”

He really didn’t feel equipped to deal with that. “Reinforcements?” he asked weakly.

“On their way,” Pepper had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Um, we’re a little bit thin on the ground. Darcy was adamant about not calling S.H.I.E.L.D., so we’ve kept it in-house, but – well – Steve and Natasha are undercover somewhere. I’ve left messages but they might be a while. Tony and Rhodey are in Somalia dealing with, uh, an _incident_ that got a bit out of control. Bruce is on a plane but he was in LA so it’s going to be another full day before he gets here. Same with your parents. I managed to find Clint and Jen in Thailand and they’re on a plane too, they’ll probably get here first.”

“So…” Jacques cursed the drugs in his system that were making his head feel fuzzy. He looked at the IV going into his arm and reached to rip it out. “Fuck, they’ve got me on morphine. I can’t think. So we’re on our own?”

“Jacques,” Pepper said softly, staying his hand, “there’s no _we_. _You_ are out of this fight, and all I can do is provide support. It’s up to Thor, and Jane, and Doctor Selvig.”

“ _Darcy’s_ out there,” he tried to pluck her hand off his arm, but he was as weak as a kitten, “with nothing but a sodding kid to protect her from whatever the fuck is coming!” he had a terrible feeling that something ominous was happening.

“And there’s nothing you can do about it! Jacques, your leg was broken in _four places_ ,” Pepper grabbed his chin and made him look. His right leg was indeed in a cast, suspended from the ceiling by pulleys. “You’re going _nowhere_.”

 

Pepper was right about who arrived first: Clint and Jen. But they arrived in London two hours too late. The Convergence had already happened, and all over the television was the mess of Greenwich and people talking about Thor and alien ships. Pepper had JARVIS continually dialling the phones of everyone they gave a damn about, and eventually Darcy picked up.

“We’re all alive,” she said succinctly, and Jacques let out a groan of relief as he heard her voice from the speaker of Pepper’s phone. “I have to go. I think we might be all about to get arrested. Again.”

“Don’t hang up, Darcy, I’m on my way,” Pepper stood and moved briskly towards the door, glancing at Jacques, who nodded at her. She yanked the door open and almost walked straight into Clint and Jen.

“Thank fuck,” Jacques said on seeing his sister and brother-in-law, “Clint, can you go with Pepper?”

Hawkeye took one look at him, nodded and pushed Jen towards her brother. “Stay here, darlin’. I’ll be back.”

 

Within hours (hours too late, Jacques couldn’t help but think bitterly) the rest of the Avengers were there. Plus his parents, his mother fussing over him until he wanted to scream. But Darcy didn’t come.

Jane came, the day after, with Doctor Selvig who he hadn’t met before, and Ian the Intern who couldn’t look him in the eye for some reason. And the day after that, Thor reappeared, looking haggard and tired and saying that Loki and Frigga were both dead. They mourned Frigga, but none of them could grieve for Loki, though they would not say so to Thor. And then Thor gave him a vile potion that tasted like motor oil and burned through his veins like liquid nitrogen, shattered his cast with a crunch of his fingers, and Jacques’ leg was whole again.

“The potion?” he asked, bemused, as Thor helped him to his feet.

“Made by my mother,” Thor rumbled with a half-smile. “She told me that it would come in handy with my Midgardian friends.”

“You shouldn’t have wasted it on me…”

“It will not run out so easily, my friend. Now come. Let us away from this place.”

 

“Where the _hell_ is Darcy?” Jacques demanded several hours later. Stark had, as usual, found them a bar and everyone was there celebrating and drinking, though Thor and Jane had snuck off into a corner and were making out like a pair of horny teenagers.

“Er,” it was Ian, his ears bright red, unable to look Jacques in the eye. “Er, Jacques – there’s something I have to tell you.”

“What? Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he couldn’t hear a thing over the loud music Stark had demanded blaring from the speakers. “Here,” he dragged Ian over to the doors and out onto the street. “What is it, mate? Do you know where Darcy is?”

Ian’s whole face had gone red by now, and he kept casting frantic looks over Jacques’ shoulder as though looking for help. “She didn’t want to come tonight.”

“Why the fuck not? She was a heroine, from what Jane told me. Helped save the world.”

“She was, she was amazing,” Ian’s eyes went dreamy. “Only, um, she kind of, got a bit caught up in the moment.”

“Spit it out,” Jacques folded his arms and glared when Ian started stuttering.

“Shekissedme. Twice.” Ian gabbled it and then cowered back as though expecting a punch.

“She kissed you.” Jacques stood, staring at the smaller man. He had a couple of inches in height on Ian and about fifty pounds of muscle.

“Yeah, I kind of saved her life from some of the creepy dark elf things and then she kissed me. And then when it was all over she kissed me again.”

“ _She_ kissed _you_.”

“Yeah. Look, you know I like her,” Ian stood tall and bravely looked Jacques in the eye. “You weren’t there and I thought I was gonna die and hell yes, I kissed her back. Only each time, once she realised what she was doing – well, the first time she actually dropped me on my ass, and the second she kind of slapped herself in the head and apologised. You know I’d never have made a move on her,” Ian gave a self-deprecating smile, “I’m too fucking terrified of you.”

“You’re not as daft as you look, then,” Jacques said dryly, though his mind was whirling. _Why the fuck was Darcy kissing Ian? Did she prefer Ian to him?_ “So are you and Darce…”

Ian shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. “If you don’t want her now she’s played around on you, I’m perfectly happy to be her shoulder to cry on.”

“You’ve got guts, kid,” Jacques said after a moment of thinking it through. “But the fact that you’re here and Darcy’s not, tells me that she turned down that offer and kicked you out. I’m willing to bet she’s crying into a bottle of red wine right about now because she knows I’d find out and she believes I won’t want her any more.”

Ian looked at him with wide, astonished eyes, and Jacques nodded to himself.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Finders ain’t keepers, mate. Darcy’s _mine_. I’ll give you a free pass this time because you saved her life, but you ever touch her again, I’ll break you in half.”

Ian nodded jerkily, watching as Jacques turned away and walked into the street, hailing a cab. He sagged back against the wall, breathing hard. _Fuck. The big Aussie soldier was a scary bastard_. He flinched as a shadow emerged from the alley beside the bar, resolving into the insanely beautiful Natasha Romanov.

“Do you have any idea how lucky you are to be alive right now?” the Black Widow asked him in a conversational tone.

“You’re not talking about the Dark Elves, are you?”

“Nup.”

“I have some idea, yeah.”

“Smart kid. Come on back inside and have another drink. I hear you’re a decent scientist wrangler? We can always use another one of those.”

 

The apartment door opened and slammed shut, and Darcy looked up blearily, expecting Jane and Thor to come stumbling through on the way to Jane’s bedroom. Or perhaps Erik, in which case she would have to do her best to make him keep his pants on. She blinked several times at the impossible sight before her, of Jacques, on his feet, coming towards her swiftly with a furious look on his face.

“Jack,” she slurred, too drunk to pronounce his name properly. “Wow. I’m hallucinating. Must be more drunk than I thought.”

He glanced once at the table with the two wine bottles on it, one of them empty and the other one nearly so. “I’m not going to get much sense out of you tonight, am I Darce? Unless your truth comes out of a wine bottle. Why d’you kiss Ian, eh?”

Tears trickled down her cheeks as she gazed up at him. “I don’t know. I wanted you to be there and I thought I was gonna die and I knew he liked me…”

“So you just did it because you could.” He folded his arms, knowing he looked intimidating, and frankly not caring.

“It was _terrible_ ,” she said in a sobbing gasp. “Like kissing a dead fish. I tried twice because the first time I think he just panicked but the second time was worse.”

“I still don’t get why you kissed him at all!” Jacques wasn’t sure why he was so worked up about something as stupid as a kiss, but the thought of anyone else touching Darcy made him clench his fists with rage. Darcy was her own woman, though, not a possession, and the choice was hers to make. It was just that he didn’t think he could bear it if she chose anyone other than him.

“Because you _left_ me, to go through that _stupid_ portal after Jane and I thought you were _dead_ and then you weren’t but I thought you _might_ die and then I thought _I_ was gonna die…”

“Okay, okay,” he realised that she was totally overwrought. She’d wanted physical comfort after too many shocks and he really couldn’t begrudge that she’d sought it from Ian, who she was well aware had a crush on her. “It doesn’t matter, Darce. It really doesn’t.”

“You forgive me?” she managed to get to her feet and wobbled over to him, putting her hands on his arms to steady herself. “I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it again. I love you so much…”

“You do?” he blinked, startled. She’d never said _that_ to him before.

“Of course I fucking do, you stupid Aussie prick, only I feel so young and stupid and not good enough for you,” she was crying again, and he was helpless before her tears. Gently he folded her in his arms, petting her hair, letting her sniffle into his shirt.

“I love you, Darcy Lewis, you crazy fool girl,” he murmured against her hair. “Totally and completely, from the first moment you sat down on my lap in Avengers Tower instead of trying to hit on Captain America or responding to Tony Stark’s flirting.” He grinned, remembering the moment.

The other Avengers had been trying to get him drunk to distract him from the fact that his sister was trying to sneak off to do the dirty with Hawkeye, and Darcy had proved a very pleasant distraction, a curvaceous flirty lapful he’d been quite happy to be distracted by. She’d been in his bed ever since, and he had no intention of letting her out of it.

Right now, though, she was falling-down drunk, and he sighed and lifted her into his arms. “Come on, my beautiful girl. A big glass of water for you and then bed.”

 

Darcy woke up wrapped around – she had a little panic as she checked, oh thank God – Jacques. He was always so deliciously warm, even in the miserable British weather. She went to the bathroom, took some painkillers for her pounding head, and then curled up to her big Aussie hot water bottle again. He opened one dark eye and squinted at her.

“Just promise me you won’t kiss Ian again?”

“Oh, shit.” Darcy didn’t remember much about the night before. “You know?”

“Yeah, and I don’t care.” He tangled big hands in her hair and kissed her, long and slow. “But here’s fair warning,” he murmured against her lips. “From now on, this beautiful mouth is _mine_.”

Darcy groaned as his strong, skilful hands went to work on her body. “I do love you,” she gasped out when he stopped kissing her for a moment to trail his lips down her neck.

“Try to remember that next time someone else saves your life,” Jacques told her, his hands stilling for a moment. “I was about this close,” he measured a small space between finger and thumb, “to killing Ian.”

“Oh don’t, he’s a sweet kid…” Darcy trailed off at the black expression on Jacques’ face. “Okay, okay,” she smiled, trying to tease him out of it. “Look, I was a _bit_ flattered. He’s been following me round like a puppy. And he really did save my life.”

“Yeah, well he’s made me come over all possessive. You belong to _me_ , Miss Lewis,” he enforced that statement by sliding a thick finger inside her, and chafing gently over her clit with his thumb. “Don’t you?”

“Yes!” Darcy gasped and squeaked as his thumb rubbed faster. “Omigod, _yes_!”

He left his marks on her; bruised, swollen lips, hickeys all over her tender throat, her breasts, her thighs, fingerprint bruises on her hips; and she was walking decidedly bow-legged when he finally let her stumble from the bed. Her smile, though, was blinding and utterly satiated, and when they went out into the main room to find some food, Ian glanced up from his laptop, gave Darcy a quick look, blushed and looked at Jacques. And in the younger man’s eyes, Jacques saw only surrender. He nodded in acknowledgement and went to the kitchen to see if Thor had left any food.

**Author's Note:**

> **Hope you enjoyed that! Next up, a little scene from the end of the movie, where Loki has a chat with Sif and the Warriors Three. For an explanation of how Loki came to sit on the throne, read the one-shot called _Glass Houses_ written by _Eternal Love Song_. It fits in nicely with this headcanon!**


End file.
